Waiting
by wildchild17
Summary: Three days ago, there was a storm on the Dawn Treader. Half a day later, they arrived on the island, and Peter has barely moved since. Will the Pevensies ever move on from what has happened? Random oneshot, set during the VDT movie. More info inside! :D


**A/N: This is a completely random oneshot of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie. Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy _and _Eustace are all there, and it takes place when they are on the Dawn Treader in a huge storm. It's also after Aslan has turned Eustace back into a boy (froma dragon). I know some parts don't fit with the movies or the books, but just… y'know. Ignore them.**

**If anyone is reading my other story, The Secret Princess - don't worry, I haven't abandoned it! I just needed to get this out of my head first :D**

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><p>It had been three days.<p>

Three days since the storm.

Three days since Lucy had fallen overboard.

They had arrived at the island only half a day later. According to the captain, the tides would wash her body up there, if anywhere. So they had come as quickly as possible, and now they were waiting.

Peter had barely moved since he sat down on the beach when they arrived. He hadn't eaten; hadn't drunk; he seemed to have only slept for a few hours at most. Of all the Pevensies, Peter's reaction was the one that unnerved King Caspian the most. Susan had cried. Edmund had spent hours staring out into the waves for any sign of his sister, and had eventually given up. Eustace had cried too, in private. But Peter – Peter just sat there, silently. He refused to talk to anyone, not even his family.

Caspian himself was unsure how he felt. Like Edmund and Susan, though they would never have admitted it, he knew in his heart that Lucy was gone. To him, Lucy had always been the sister of the woman he loved; he had never really looked at her all that closely. But now she was gone, he felt the place where she should have been more intensely than he would ever have expected.

That night, Peter sat alone on the sand. He couldn't give up. He had to wait, to watch, he had to do that for his sister. He couldn't fall asleep.

It wasn't until he woke up that he realized he had done just that, and even before he opened his eyes, he knew she was there.

Lucy was lying on the white sand in the dawn sunshine. Her beautiful red-brown hair was spread out around her pale face, and she had lost her shoes. Her shirt was ripped, but her dagger and healing potion were still at her waist. It made him want to smile, and then he wanted to cry, because she was dead, and he shouldn't be smiling.

She looked so peaceful.

And then he did cry. Peter dropped to his knees beside his youngest sister's lifeless body, and sobbed.

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><p>That was how Caspian found him when he awoke. He hated to see the man who had once been a High King of Narnia, a strong and powerful warrior, reduced to this. Wordlessly, he pulled him away from Lucy's body. Peter was still crying, his eyes red and his face stained with tear-tracks.<p>

"Peter, please," Caspian pleaded, wishing the man would stop weeping. Peter scrubbed his face angrily and looked up to meet the young King's gaze.

"This is my fault."

Caspian shook his head. "No. No! You couldn't have done anything to stop it, Peter, it was the storm that took her."

But Peter closed his eyes, and Caspian knew he had closed his ears as well. Quietly, he stood up and went to wake Susan and Edmund.

Edmund was silent. He walked over to Lucy's body and sat down beside her. Caspian could see he was speaking, and turned away, feeling as though he was intruding.

Susan cried again and he held her. She couldn't bear to see her sister's body, not like this. She didn't say so, but he knew. After a few minutes, she left him to comfort Peter. He was no longer crying but looked as if he was drowning in despair.

"I should have looked after her better. I promised Mum – I said I would keep you all safe…" he whispered.

Susan took his hands in hers, forcing him to look at her. "Pete. This isn't your fault. It's nobody's fault. Lucy's with Aslan now," she choked, desperately trying not to cry in front of him.

Peter and Edmund dug the hole themselves. It was on the beach, out of the tide's reach, sheltered from the elements. It was a lovely place, free and wild and open.

"She would have loved it here," Edmund murmured. Peter just nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

He walked back over the white sand to where Lucy's body was. Susan had found her a new shirt to replace the ripped one. She looked beautiful, achingly beautiful, and Peter wondered why he had never noticed it before. His little sister had grown into a woman without him even noticing.

Swallowing back the tears, he bent down and lifted her into his arms. She was very light. He walked slowly back along the beach to the place they had chosen to bury her.

"I'm sorry, Luce," he whispered. "I'm sorry I wasn't there when it mattered." He had been there for her all his life; holding her hand and looking after her; but that one time he had not, and now she was gone forever.

He continued to walk, wanting the moment to last forever, until he finally became aware of a huge shadow in front of him.

"Aslan?" He looked up.

The lion nodded his head gently, and with a frown Peter realized that he looked sad. Impossibly, heart-wrenchingly miserable. "Peter, lay your sister down over here."

The young man looked confused. "But… I thought…"

Aslan just looked at him. "Lucy belongs in my kingdom now," he said quietly.

Peter nodded and looked down at his youngest sister's face for the last time. Then he turned and walked back to Edmund, Susan and Eustace.

"Where is she?" Susan asked him.

"Aslan," was all he would say.

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><p>They sat in silence for a long time, unable to think of anything to say. But after a while, Susan spoke up.<p>

"Do you remember when… when we all thought that Aslan was dead on the Stone Table? You weren't there, but Lucy insisted that we had to tell you so that you could prepare for the battle. I didn't want to; I couldn't accept that Aslan was gone, but Lu said that we had to carry on. She said we had to keep fighting, we couldn't just give up," Susan choked back a sob. "She would want – want us to keep going. She would hate it that we're all just – sitting around like this, she would want us to be happy." The young woman gave a weak smile. Edmund covered his hand with hers.

"Lucy was always there. She was wise and clever and trusting, and yet she was always just a child at heart," he said quietly.

They carried on like that for some time, until they were smiling and happy with the memories they had shared. But in the end, silence fell again, and this time no one could find a way to break it.

As it turned out, nobody needed to. A roar echoed into the clear air of the island, shattering the peace.

"Aslan," Eustace leapt to his feet. All at once, by complete chance, the four of them turned together towards the place where the lion had taken Lucy's body. And not one of them could quite believe what they saw.

"_Lucy?_" Peter gasped.

For there, next to the huge lion, stood the girl who had been dead only hours before. She was speaking to Aslan quietly, and she looked _different _somehow, but none of them could have said what exactly it was that made her different. Afterwards, Edmund always said that she had become a woman, but just at that moment, that thought had not even crossed his mind.

Lucy turned slowly and walked towards them. She looked at each of them in turn and bit her lip anxiously. Peter was the first to move. He rushed towards her, tears running down his face, but this time they were tears of joy, not of anguish. They embraced, and suddenly Lucy was crying too, and all of them were together in one massive bear hug.

What happened after that was a blur for all of them. There were more tears and happy reunions, and there was food and talking. Nobody asked Lucy how exactly Aslan had brought her back from the dead, and if they had, she would not have been able to answer, because she didn't know. But at last, Peter remembered the lion, and he left the others quietly and walked back along the beach towards him.

"Thank you," he whispered, unable to think of anything else to say. Aslan looked at him, and something that could have been a smile passed over his face. "I don't know what I would have done without her." Peter took a breath. "She holds us all together. I don't think she knows it, but she does." Still the lion said nothing. Peter tried again. "Why did you… save her? I mean, not that I wish you hadn't, obviously, but why?" He couldn't quite believe he was actually asking that.

Aslan met Peter's gaze. "It was not her time to die," he said simply. "It would have destroyed you."

Peter was silent for a moment or two. "What happens at home if you die here?" He remembered asking Edmund that question a long time ago, but he had never answered it.

Aslan frowned at him slightly. "You can never know what _would _have happened, Peter."

"I just thought… what if…"

"None of you are going to die in this world, Peter. You will live your lives in your own world, and you will be happy there, and then one day you will come to live in my kingdom with me forever."

"What's it like there?"

Aslan laughed, a deep, wild sound. "That, you will know only when you get there."

And he got up and walked away down the beach, and when Peter looked away for only a moment, he was gone.

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><p><strong>AN: And there we go! My first oneshot :D please leave a review if you have a moment!**


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